With a seemingly countless number of blogs on the internet today, it can be quite difficult to stand out from the rest and gain valuable attention. Search engines help people find content that they desire, but it is a dog-fight to be ranked well enough to be seen by most. Social media and email marketing are two newer/different forms of communication that can help boost traffic in other ways, but it all boils down to the effectiveness of concepts such as SEO and marketing. If your blog could use a vital infusion of traffic, then continue reading to learn about some tips that may help you break away from the pack.

Utilize Affiliate Marketing

Many people think of affiliate marketing as a way to sell products and earn commissions through their websites. You may even be using affiliate marketing right  now as a way to earn passive income on your blog. Have you considered flipping the concept on its head? Affiliate marketing can be used by you as one way to generate additional blog traffic. Whether you have an e-book, small store or merely great content to offer, signing up for affiliate marketing programs in which your links are shared elsewhere can help initiate plenty of new traffic – with the overall goal being to capture visitors and pique their interests with various offerings and pieces of content on your site. Selling products through affiliate marketing is great, but it can also be used to boost meaningful traffic to your blog.

Build a Forum

Your blog may feel like a lonely place to many when it is just a straightforward blog and comments section. Blogs that emphasize community tend to do better and retain more loyal fan-bases. As if this weren’t enough, pinging search engines with links to forums (from your domain) can be a vital component of search engine optimization as well. Did you know that Google algorithms currently prioritize forum threads, questions and responses in many of its search results? By creating a forum on your blog that users can participate in, the organic discussion will naturally begin to grow and help you rank better in a variety of search results. This in turn will ultimately drive more traffic to your website via the increased visibility.

Be Unique

Every blog, website and store has the ability to offer something truly different from the rest of the competition. Whether this is tangible or intangible can vary from site to site, but your blog can find a way to generate plenty of new traffic by implementing something completely unique in the form of content. Regardless of niche, there is a way and a method to cover or offer a product, service or content solution that can’t be found anywhere else. Especially when dealing with smaller niches, this unique concept can help spread word about your blog very quickly among community members and accentuate existing traffic augmentation strategies (as if pinging search engines with new content wasn’t good enough of an excuse).

Traffic naturally ebbs and flows from month to month, and from Google update to update. The overall goal, however, is a long-term increase in traffic. There are many ways to boost traffic: what are some other strategies you have used to succeed?